


Stimuli

by amazinglyhorribleegg



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Cutting, Dan Avidan deserves better, Depressing, Depression, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Metaphors, No Dialogue, Sad, Self-Harm, Steam Train (Game Grumps), Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, dan avidan-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 01:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14945216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazinglyhorribleegg/pseuds/amazinglyhorribleegg
Summary: Once you listen to your favourite song for so long your brain stops responding to the stimuli like it did before, causing your brain to look for something new. Once you live the same version of your miserable life for over three months and feel nothing but heaviness in your chest, your brain gets tired. It looks for something new and eventually you'll get so tired of your life that your brain will switch the channel.Except this channel if your life, and there's only one other channel you can change to.-=-(TW!)





	Stimuli

**Author's Note:**

> This story talks about:  
> ~Suicide  
> ~Depression  
> ~Self harm  
> in detail. This is based on my own experience, but it may be triggering. Please stay safe.

Dan hadn't cried in a long time.

At some points, he wished he could cry. Feel something other than the sadness engulfing his chest like darkness creeping in, pull the plug from the overflowing sink of darkness and let everything empty down the drain.

But that couldn't happen. He couldn't cry. He tried everything, from sad songs thinking of his dad dying - he created a ceremony in his head and stayed up until three am now somehow sadder than before, but all he could get was teary eyes from a yawn.

Once you listen to your favourite song for so long your brain stops responding to the stimuli like it did before, causing your brain to look for something new. Once you live the same version of your miserable life for over three months and feel nothing but heaviness in your chest, your brain gets tired. It looks for something new, from drugs, to sex, and eventually you'll get so tired of your life as a song playing back-to-back in your head that your brain will switch the channel. But this channel if your life, and there's only one other channel you can change to.

Dan needed release. He could feel the jittery fire of a million ants crawl under his skin and he hated it. The feeling of them weighing down his bones made him exhausted. So he turned to cutting. And it was something, it was something that wasn't the numb feeling in his head, in his stomach and under his skin. It was something new. It was a five second ad between his drowning chorus of life that kept him interested and kept his hands away from the channel dial.

But it all got ripped away from him once it was over, leaving him back in his monotone life. It felt terrible, the aftermath from the pain. But each time he cut it felt good, it felt like an anchor he could hold on to, just to escape the constant ringing in his head.

It was all a façade, Dan realized. The cutting felt like something new, but instead it was just an altered version of his sadness dying his forearm into shades of red, causing anxiety-inducing moments when one of his co-workers saw them. Although he thought it was about time someone noticed his pain, he moved his relief to his thighs where they wouldn't be seen.

He doesn't want to pull others down with him, just so they can watch him kill himself and fake pity.

Oh, wait. That's new.

Suddenly something different comes in: suicide. While it was always an option before, now it's inviting. The thought of freedom from his chains was the perfect bait for his brain, and it knew that. Dan knew that. He knew that it was all just a trick, but he soon found himself eyeing the bait with hungry eyes.

It was terrifying, because suddenly his whole world was being turned upside-down. The monotone song was either muted or on full blast, and each morning when he woke up it was a chance game. Will it be the dead-set idea of death that leads him googling suicide methods or will it be him screaming and begging, terrified for himself and his life. He was walking a tightrope and on is left there's life, on the right there's death. He can't stay on the rope forever. One day he will fall. It's just a matter of when?

But as the months trailed on he realized that the times he wanted to be alive became few and far between. There would be times him and Arin would sit on the couch and laugh - truly laugh - over some stupid joke about a stupid game and Dan would want to live so desperately that it hurt. Bursts of colour would appear behind his eyelids and it would be something that was different, something that was good. But it all would fall down the next morning, when he would wake up in his lifeless body, his hollow bones too weak to life up his arms, his mind smothered in deafening silence. That silence would last for days, days on end until Dan finally found a few minutes of blinding lights that would push himself another day. But how long will that fuel last before it all disappears?

The cuts got deeper as it soon became part of his never-ending song. The repeated mantra of 'kill yourself' couldn't be covered by blood on a tissue anymore. It got too loud, too persistent, too _right._

Dan became background noise to the world. Everyone's lives continued without him, and he was too tired to care. He heard Arin, Ross and Brian laugh from the recording room and knew that the videos were more entertaining for the lovelies than his useless ass on game grumps. And when Suzy stopped saying hi to him when he walked past her in her beanbag chair every morning, who cared? They'd survive without him. They already do.

So Dan planned it. He spent his free time googling everything on his phone and he made a plan. A plan that would work, a plan that would change the channel on the radio. A plan to make everyone happy. Every day Dan said he would do it. Every night he would walk out of the grump room and get in his car and have the choice between turning left to go home and right to go to the bridge, and every day he turned left. He didn't know why.

Dan could see a way out. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The light was switching the station and ending the terrible, terrible record player that is his life. It was there. Just another step. Just another day.

Just one turn of a switch.

Just one more excuse.

He didn't care if anyone saw the cuts littering his body. He didn't care if hate comments filled the youtube videos due to Dan just not focusing. He didn't care that Brain was pissed at him for not working on music and Arin was pissed that Dan was ruining grumps and he didn't care that nobody - _nobody -_ has noticed his pain in the past year.

No,

It didn't matter.

 

 

Dan hadn't cried in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write hurt/comfort with Dan and Arin but instead this happened.  
> This probably makes no sense but it's rare I can catch the thoughts and emotions to this so I took the chnance to vent / write while I can.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feel free to leave comments/criticism, but remember that this is a vent, so try to be a little easy on me. Have a great day!


End file.
